


but i still know the words to this song

by seohin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Complete, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen, Infidelity, M/M, Phone Calls, Protective Sam Winchester, Teacher Dean Winchester, Weddings, relationship dynamics, unconventional relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25584556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seohin/pseuds/seohin
Summary: There’s another silence, this one seeming to bear down on Dean too, and he finds himself gripping his pen tighter as he waits for the inevitable answer.“I… I think Cas is cheating on you.” Sam says it all at once, tumbling out of his mouth like he’s almost afraid of the reaction that it would cause. Dean pauses, fingers tensing before he lets go of the pen, letting it clatter to the desk. Sam’s voice breaks, and it takes Dean a moment to remember that while Sam and Cas might not be friends, Sam liked Cas the most out of all the guys Dean’s dated and this must’ve been hurting him as much as he expected it to hurt Dean.
Relationships: Balthazar/Castiel (Supernatural), Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	but i still know the words to this song

**Author's Note:**

> i know that the tags say infidelity, but its... unconventional ig but if that triggers u in any way pls take time out for urself and do what’s best for u :)
> 
> (yes i did get the title from tiktok don’t @ me_)
> 
> Enjoy!!

Dean’s phone’s ringing off the hook, and he has no fucking clue why. He loves Sam, but holy shit the amount of pre-wedding jitters he has around his upcoming nuptials almost makes Dean wonder if he should try and get him to a doctor’s appointment because he’s been to his fair share of weddings and can’t remember anyone being this nervous. Still, there’s almost nothing right now that should be cause for alarm, even for Sam — Dean's already confirmed like ten times that _Yes, I have written the Best Man speech, Charlie’s already looked it over man, calm down_ , and _No, Jess is not trying to break up with you, she still loves you, where the_ hell _did you get that idea?_

But because he’s a good big brother he still picks up the phone, finishing inputting Evans’s grade into the database and getting started on Chamber’s essay.

“What’s up?” 

There’s silence on the other end and Dean frowns, saving the half-completed list of grades for his students, already anticipating the emails he’ll get and instead giving his full focus to Sam. 

“…Sam?” He asks, this time cautious, already running a mental checklist through his head of what could be wrong — this seems worse than Sam’s normal self-flagellation of thinking Jess would break up with him even after seven years of dating and a pregnancy scare. He likes to think it’s a testament to how well he knows Sam that he’s able to figure this out from the first five seconds of a phone call, and not just a side effect of the weird-ass codependency they got living on the road.

Sam takes in a shaky breath, and then talks, voice tense. “Have you talked to Cas recently?” he begins, and Dean’s shackles immediately go up. It’s been almost five years since his and Cas’s weird arrangement got started in the first place, and of the very short list of people that know about it, Sam is not on it.

“Yeah,” Dean says after a short pause, and his voice is tense even as he starts going through his messages, checking that Charlie’s program is still working as he tries to find anything incriminating in his texts or Twitter.

Sam’s quiet, again, and then he continues, almost to himself, “God, this would be so much easier face to face.”

It doesn’t seem like Sam’s figured it out — on the contrary, he seems almost pitying, which is definitely not what Dean expected, compared to Charlie and Gabriel’s reactions. “What would be easier?” he prompts, chewing on his lip.

There’s another silence, this one seeming to bear down on Dean too, and he finds himself gripping his pen tighter as he waits for the inevitable answer.

“I… I think Cas is cheating on you.” Sam says it all at once, tumbling out of his mouth like he’s almost afraid of the reaction that it would cause. Dean pauses, fingers tensing before he lets go of the pen, letting it clatter to the desk. Sam’s voice breaks, and it takes Dean a moment to remember that while Sam and Cas might not be friends, Sam liked Cas the most out of all the guys Dean’s dated and this must’ve been hurting him as much as he expected it to hurt Dean.

Dean doesn’t know what to say, really, in the end, and instead he just lets out a shaky breath, massaging at his forehead as he tries to think of some kind of reason, some kind of excuse that would make sense.

“I was driving to Pontiac because his flight got cancelled and he needed someone to pick him up, y’know? And I was going past some shady motel on the highway, and I… I saw Cas there, with some guy I think he works with? It’s— it wasn’t anything obvious, of course, but they were in the same motel room, and… they were just talking, right? They weren’t…”

He wants to comfort Sam but they both know it’s a false notion to hold onto, that Cas probably is cheating on Dean. But this is something Dean needs to talk to Cas about _before_ actually letting Sam know… anything.

“Oh,” he says, because that’s what Sam expects him to say, and mentally curses Cas. “I… wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, I— I’m gonna call Cas, okay? I’ll— I’ll call you back.”

“Take as much time as you need… just— I’m here for you, okay? We all are.”

“Yeah… for whatever it’s worth, thanks for telling me.”

They hang up and Dean rolls his eyes, dialing Cas’s number. He knew it was a bad idea to have Cas arrive in Lebanon a week before him for the wedding, and holy shit was he right.

“Dean?”

Cas sounds a bit startled, which is for good reason — as much as Charlie’s program makes it _look_ like Dean and Cas call and text regularly, Dean thinks the last time he’s actually reached out to Cas through his phone was almost six months ago. As far as Cas knows they’ve already hammered out the kinks in their plan for the wedding, so technically, there should be no reason for Dean to call him. Then again, there should’ve been no reason for Sam to call _Dean_ , so…

“Sam saw you with Balthazar.”

There’s silence on the other end, and Dean lets himself take whatever guilty pleasure he can in that. They’d figured out pretty early on that for this arrangement to work they couldn’t yell whenever one of them slipped up, and as much as Dean wants to throttle Cas for being so careless, he knows that Cas took as many precautions as he could and it was just bad luck. 

“I suppose he thinks I’m cheating on you?” Cas snorts, and from the clatter in the background Dean thinks he’s at Benny’s restaurant for dinner or something. If it was two years ago he’d ask for Cas to put an order in for him but they’d tried the ‘actually dating’ thing and that had ended _horribly_ , so Dean just sighs and ignores the pangs of craving. 

“Yeah… should we just do it?”

There’s even more quiet on the other end, and then the slam of a door closing and wind whistling through the microphone as Cas presumably gets outside. “Aunt Amara just got out of rehab, if we want to end it we’d have to wait a few weeks. I don’t think Mother would be able to process it right now.”

“Sam won’t get why I’m letting you off the hook and then randomly break it off with you in the future, unless we purposely have someone catch you with Balthazar again.”

“And Balthazar, I’m sure, would hate getting involved in this — he actually quite likes our current arrangement, I think.”

“Yeah, he’s a ‘no strings attached’ kinda guy if I’ve ever seen one.” 

They both sigh, and Dean shakes his head. It was meant to just be a quick, one-time thing — a classmate wanting a date to stick it to his homophobic cousins, Dean needing a date to finally get everyone off his back about ‘settling down’. The fact that neither of them actually _cared_ or hadn’t even talked to each other before it had just been an added bonus, and now it was nice, not having Jo and Sam and even _Garth_ on his back to go on a date every other week. He wasn’t sure how they’d actually lasted five years without anyone getting suspicious, though, so he guesses this was just overdue.

“I don’t know about you,” Cas finally begins, “but I think our current arrangement works just fine. I don’t think I’d like them thinking I’m a cheater, really, and I have no plans of trying to _actually_ find a boyfriend or trying to get serious with Balthazar.”

Dean nods to himself, massaging his forehead. “Same here. I can’t even begin to describe how insufferable they were before I told them about you.” There’s a muffled agreement, and Dean continues. “So what, you guys were ‘having a business meeting?’” It sounds ridiculous, even to him. “There’s literally no way I can spin it without them thinking I’m desperately trying to protect you or something.”

There’s another pause, Cas humming quietly to himself as he thinks.

“Tell him Balthazar and I were good friends, and he’d been in a tight spot and needed my help. We stopped by the motel to rest for a few hours because he got banged up, arrived in Pontiac that night.”

“Sam picked you up this morning, right? Should make sense to him.” The fact that it’s going to be torture to get them to believe them is another matter, but it’s better than nothing.

Sighing, Dean turns and opens his inbox, already finding a strongly worded email from Ms. Kaia Nieves that gives Dean a headache just looking at it. “Alright. I’ll call Sam tomorrow, hopefully stop him from pissing in your coffee or something.”

They hang up and Dean sighs, again. He’s been doing a lot of that today.

The wedding is going to be _hell_.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta’d
> 
> For any interested ab the ‘backstory’:  
> -dean and Cas take the same class for whatever reason idk, Cas overhears dean talking ab how his friends constantly set him up, offers a one-time-only solution to both of their problems  
> -ends up happening more than one time  
> -actually ends up working out bc dean and Cas live in Pontiac while most of their family live in Lebanon  
> -Charlie finds out and then yells at them for not putting effort into their backstory, sets up their phones to automatically send messages at random intervals + have call histories that never happened  
> -Gabriel finds out bc he’s a sneaky little shit  
> -during the end of the second year both of them catch feelings for each other but bc they actually don’t know much ab each other other then ~sexual tension~ so it doesn’t end well, continue w/the agreement bc its working well for both of them so far  
> -Balthazar + Cas are fuckbuddies, he knows ab Cas + dean and is glad he isn’t expected to have any actual relationship w/Cas  
> -Cas is a social security worker  
> -dean is a university professor  
> -cas’s flight to Lebanon gets cancelled, Sam drives out to pick up him up but drives thro the night so he sees Cas + bal at the motel, drives thro and stays in a motel @ Pontiac to figure out what he saw  
> -picks up Cas in the morning, cold shoulders him until they reach Lebanon where he calls dean ASAP  
> -Sam finds out at the wedding and almost flips tables
> 
> I wrote this mainly bc as much as i love ‘fake relationship -> real relationship’ trope, i also love love LOVE Cas and dean being like... idiots not in love and so i wrote this 
> 
> (i was thinking of writing smth along the lines of smosh’s ‘two truths and a lie’ (the one w/Ian and his ex-gf) where dean and Cas are ex-bfs who have make-up sex every other day but never *actually* make up and are like petty as hell and no one actually knows if they’re together or not but i decided not to so if any of y’all want to go wild ;))


End file.
